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Governance Wiki talk:Categories
''Disclaimer: This page currently expresses the opinions of Jesdisciple; it should be edited to carry both a more community-representative tone and a third-person perspective. When this has been accomplished, please remove this disclaimer.'' I've worked on several wikis (and burnt out on all but this one), and I've always obsessed over categories. I've found structural problems at almost every one of them; I think Wikipedia is the only exception. Structure matters because a user who can't find the right article won't benefit from its content. He will either clutter the wiki with a new, nearly identical one or simply leave; neither response is good. Two of the most common mistakes are category creep and a lack of clear consensus. Category creep is the tendency of a community to make categories for every useful combination of basic ones, and it makes the hierarchy unnecessarily difficult to maintain. A good example, which I take from first-hand experience, is a profile system. Each user enters physical and social characteristics into a profile template and is categorized according to those characteristics. Then the categories might start creeping: "Males younger than 30"; "Caucasian Californians"; "Caucasian male Californians younger than 30"; etc. Although I don't yet know how to use Semantic MediaWiki features, this is exactly the kind of thing they are made to cure. So I'm glad that Giki is a Semantic Wiki. Another problem, with more severe consequences, is a lack of consensus about how categories should be arranged. As AnupamSaraph pointed out, most users care very little how a wiki is structured, and even those who do care are sometimes less than informed. Given the nature of wikis, a user who doesn't understand what's going on, or why, may begin a parallel effort to achieve the same goal. These efforts eventually become practically impossible to merge, and the division perpetuates itself. Therefore, a unity must be promoted from the outset; this document tries to define what we will unite over. :Some agreement here, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater! — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:03, 15 May 2009 (UTC) ::Now is a good time to raise concerns. I hope to eventually get this opinion distilled down to a policy page, and concerns raised now won't need to be remembered then. ::One concern I have for the discussion is whether we should separate the article from the talk page as normal. --Jesdisciple (talk) 04:50, 16 May 2009 (UTC) Specific categories A specific category is one which is the intersection of two or more others. For example, Counties of Texas is the intersection of Texas and Counties of USA; the latter is the intersection of Counties and USA. Although the Semantic extension may eventually make all specific categories obsolete, the current consensus seems to be that we should wait for that to happen before removing them. To be continued... --Jesdisciple (talk) 04:50, 16 May 2009 (UTC) Another issue is the format of specific categories. Is there any benefit for the community in naming consistency? For example, I followed the " of " (e.g., Cities of USA) pattern for Counties of Texas, but the pre-existent Washington counties did not. Should such categories be renamed to follow this format? (In case we divide the page, this is talk-page material.) --Jesdisciple (talk) 04:50, 16 May 2009 (UTC) :I consider this topic unresolved; please reply. A complete list of such topics with rationale is available at User:Jesdisciple/Loose threads. --Jesdisciple (talk) 14:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)